I Want To Tell You About a Boy I Love
“Ustadh, I want to tell you about a boy I love”
A 12 year old student said this to one of the teachers on our team who had built the habit of listening to his students’ ‘unimportant’ talks, picking interest in them and discussing with them the seemingly unimportant affairs.
This is ultimate success: That a child comes to you to talk about a boy she loves rather before you ‘catch’ her in a relationship with the boy.
Our goal as parents should be to get to a level where our girls can tell us: “Mum I love this boy at the mosque”. And you know why?
Because if, for any reason, they do not feel comfortable enough to tell you, they will tell the next closest person whom they feel comfortable talking to: that may be the boy himself. From there, to God be the glory!
Your 11,12,13 year olds have a lot of important things to discuss, but they’re smart and sensitive, so they prepare the battleground for those important talks by engaging you in unimportant ones to see how interested and caring you are about them. That is why we have talked about the importance of listening generally in this article.
However, apart from listening generally to know more about our children and prove that we care about them, one other thing that is necessary in creating a good connection is dispelling the myth that your daughter or son discussing some matters with you is a sign of your laxity with them, or that some matters should not be discussed in a religious home; and one of those matters is the matter of love and relationships.
Look, dear parent, we are in 2021, your 12 year old girl has a boy she likes. Take it or leave it, she has! And your not discussing it with her will not make the love fade.
She likes who she likes already, accept that.
Swallow it. Drink water. Now, we can talk about what you should do and what you should not.
Maybe ideally, 11 year olds should not love (thinking aloud: but Aaisha loved the Prophet at nine) but let’s leave what is ideal and face what is realistic: your child loves someone already, and if you sweep it under the carpet, it will get worse.
You need to identify the boy/girl, know why your child likes him/her and calmly guide your child. The topic of guiding children in such situations is a totally different one which we shall discuss soon insha Allah, but the first thing is to open the door to such conversations and dispel the myth that kids will never, or should never tell you such things.
They will tell you about the boy they love if you have been nursing a good connection with them and exhibiting all of the foundations of good connection; after all, the teacher in our story is old enough to be a parent to the girl.
And you should allow them tell you because it is already the reality that they go through such issues, and if they do not tell you, they will tell someone else who might not guide them right about it.
As parents, not only should we listen to unimportant things, but we must be ready to listen to some “dirty” things and react in the right away.
In fact, we should not wait for our kids to discuss some of these things with us, we should sometimes push them for this makes them more comfortable.
We could jokingly ask them who they like among the boys in madrasah, or ask who they’d marry if they had a chance to marry now.
That way, we open the door for them to talk and divulge what they have in their minds, and see us as lovers who they can talk to about anything.
But no matter how much you push your child, if they notice one trait in you, they will never ever be comfortable to tell you things, and you will miss the chance to calmly guide them, and they would become vulnerable.
That one thing is what we will discuss in our next article.
Don’t miss out on any of our activities.
